MSNBC

A lot of people found 2013 to be a bad year. MSBNC had a really bad year.

The ratings have been in the toilet. They moved Ed Schultz out of prime-time to a Saturday afternoon (!) dead zone and then back to just-out of prime time though his show wasn’t getting clobbered as badly as the hapless Chris Hayes is by the invincible O’Reilly Factor.

MSBNC gave Alec Baldwin a “talk” show. At least, I guess it was. It got yanked off the air so fast over Baldwin’s bad temper and big mouth that it’s hard to remember what kind of show it was supposed to be.

Martin Bashir lost his afternoon show for suggesting someone should defecate in Sarah Palin’s mouth.

Just to wrap things up in a big red bow, on the Melissa Harris-Perry show, the panel had a big tee-hee over Mitt Romney welcoming a new grandson, an adopted Black baby named Kieran Romney, to the family and hilarity ensued on the show.

“Everybody loves a baby picture,” Harris-Perry said, “and this was one that really, a lot of people had emotions about this baby picture this year. This is the Romney family. And, of course, there on Governor Romney’s knee is his adopted grandson, who is an African-American, adopted African-American child, Kieran Romney.”

As Harris-Perry made the introduction, panelist Pia Glenn sang “One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just isn’t the same,” a tune whose original lyrics read “one of these things doesn’t belong.”

“And that little baby, front and center, would be the one,” she added.

“And isn’t he the most gorgeous?” Harris-Perry said. “My goal is that in 2040, the biggest thing of the year will be the wedding between Kieran Romney and North West. Can you imagine Mitt Romney and Kanye West as in-laws?”

Comedian Dean Obeidallah chimed in by reducing the baby to a token. “I think this picture is great,” he said. “It really sums up the diversity of the Republican party, the RNC. At the convention, they find the one black person.”

There goes the neighborhood.

I don’t like Mitt Romney and he would have been a lousy president, but while he is rich elitist and exhibits no particular concern for other races it doesn’t by default mean he’s overtly hostile to them either. But even if he was that’s no reason to make fun of his Black grandson.

Harris-Perry quickly issued an apology on Twitter and her MSNBC page, but it was too late. She had handed her critics a sword and they pounced to impale her with it accusing her of reverse-racism against the Romneys.

At the beginning of her Saturday program Harris-Perry issued another apology to Governor Romney’s family and those she offended with her failed attempt at humor, but didn’t make it though the segment before breaking down tearfully.

Romney was scheduled to appear on Fox News the next day where he was certain to be asked about the controversy, but the blogosphere wasn’t about to wait for him as one critic sneered, “She’s only sorry because her producer/ station caught so much backlash, they knew they needed to apologize. I seriously doubt it’s heartfelt. Even abusers can turn on the tears when apologizing. Not buying into her act.”

I’ve met Melissa Harris-Perry. She’s an academic, not an actress.

When someone says they’re sorry and it’s them saying it and not a spokesperson, agent or some crisis manager, it should be accepted as genuine and heartfelt until proven otherwise. Everyone screws up. It’s how you handle the screw-up and move past it that matters.

Some folks insist on having their pound of flesh and will keep carving until they get it.

She fucked up. She apologized multiple times. The object of the insult accepted the apology.

On her Right flank, MHP is taking flak for an apology judged insincere. On her Left flank, MHP is catching hell for apologizing at all. They’re both full of it. Only the blindest partisans and the terminally cynical would doubt the sincerity of the apology.

Romney didn’t seem to as he said on Fox, “I think people recognize, and the folks at MSNBC who have apologized recognize, people like me are fair targets: If you get in the political game, you can expect incoming. For children, that’s beyond the line. I think they understand that and feel that as well. I think it’s a heartfelt apology, and I think for that reason we hold no ill will whatsoever.”

That should be it. Of course it’s not.

Mitt Romney didn’t have to accept Harris-Perry’s apology as being sincere. That he did speaks to his compassion and understanding that human beings–even ones on MSNBC–fail and when they try to do the right thing after doing the wrong thing, they should be forgiven.

Nothing has changed how I feel about Harris-Perry and her guests heavy-handed and dim-witted attempt at humor at a child’s expense. But let’s not overreact here, okay? This isn’t the first person in the media to screw up and go after a kid or any other soft target. MHP used poor judgment and she got rightfully called out for it.

I hope she learns from her mistakes and grows from the experience. Too often others in the same position haven’t apologized. Not sincerely, not insincere or at all.

For every one Harris-Perry royally effing up there are dozens of examples of a Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Bill Maher, Al Sharpton or Alec Baldwin saying something simultaneously stupid and horrific and any apology, if one is offered at all, comes grudgingly and delivered with a smirk, a snicker and a wink.

I didn’t see any of that in Harris-Perry’s apology. I guess her haters did.

In the depressingly vast sea of Whiteness of cable TV talking heads, Melissa Harris-Perry provides a shot of not only much needed racial diversity, but a degree of intelligence, wit and class to a medium conspicuously short of all the above.

It’s time to forgive and forget and mostly forget.

The Unforgiven?

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There used to a half-serious joke that once Michael Jackson’s skin turned White and his nose started falling off, it wasn’t the real Michael Jackson. The real Michael was sick or locked away somewhere and this freakish clone of him was the one being wheeled out to the public.

Is that what happened to Cornel West? There’s a guy running around who looks like him. He sort of sounds like him if Cornel West only talked about how much he despises President Obama. He even wears the only suit in West’s closet. It’s too bad it isn’t a clone of Cornel West trashing his own rep while he trashes the president. It would be even easier to dismiss him as a bitter hater than it already is.

West’s latest in a series of tiresome tirades short of any intellectual insights, but long on street-level smack talk came in an interview with Tavis “Sub-Prime” Smiley, the Iago to West’s Othello:

Smiley:“What’s your sense of how the media, and not just Fox News but beyond that, your read as you’ve been watching this, how the media handled this case?”

West:“I think that it’s been decrepit though, brother. I mean, you get a focus on some of the upper middle class folk. I mean, what I call the ‘rent-a-negro’ phenomenon on MSNBC.”

This is almost funny. West snipes at his former allies, Rev. Al Sharpton and Michael Eric Dyson (and longtime adversary, Melissa Harris-Perry) for appearing on MSNBC (a network that has given West plenty of face time) while his best buddy Smiley has whored himself out to such corporations as Wal-Mart, Exxon, Wells-Fargo and McDonald’s. This does not trouble West as he is represented by Smiley for book publishing and speaking engagements (West earns up to $25,000 to speak).

In other words, if you got the cash, you can rent West and Smiley’s ashy asses. If MSNBC came calling and offered West and Smiley a show, how fast would they run not walk to sign on the dotted line?

The dizzying descent of West as an intellectual has been rapid and sad to behold. West has permitted the unscrupulous Smiley to co-opt him into a sustained and relentless campaign of negativity and baseless criticism of President Obama and any Black person who doesn’t share West and Smiley’s opinion.

“Eff me? Eff YOU! My dear brother.”

The roots of West’s rage trace back to when Obama’s first inauguration. West was angry Obama hadn’t personally thanked him for his support and ensuring West was invited to the inauguration.

“There is the personal level,” he says. “I used to call my dear brother [Obama] every two weeks. I said a prayer on the phone for him, especially before a debate. And I never got a call back. And when I ran into him in the state Capitol in South Carolina when I was down there campaigning for him he was very kind. The first thing he told me was, ‘Brother West, I feel so bad. I haven’t called you back. You been calling me so much. You been giving me so much love, so much support and what have you.’ And I said, ‘I know you’re busy.’ But then a month and half later I would run into other people on the campaign and he’s calling them all the time. I said, wow, this is kind of strange. He doesn’t have time, even two seconds, to say thank you or I’m glad you’re pulling for me and praying for me, but he’s calling these other people. I said, this is very interesting. And then as it turns out with the inauguration I couldn’t get a ticket with my mother and my brother. I said this is very strange. We drive into the hotel and the guy who picks up my bags from the hotel has a ticket to the inauguration. My mom says, ‘That’s something that this dear brother can get a ticket and you can’t get one, honey, all the work you did for him from Iowa.’ Beginning in Iowa to Ohio. We had to watch the thing in the hotel.”

“What it said to me on a personal level,” he goes on, “was that brother Barack Obama had no sense of gratitude, no sense of loyalty, no sense of even courtesy, [no] sense of decency, just to say thank you. Is this the kind of manipulative, Machiavellian orientation we ought to get used to? That was on a personal level.”

What that says to me is the only thing bigger on Cornel West than the gap between his teeth and his busted-ass Afro is his ego. It’s as big as outdoors and Dear Brother Cornel likes to have his ego stroked frequently and often.

I respect Dear Brother West. I bought Race Matters by the Dear Brother because race does matter and so did his observations.. I watched the Dear Brother on television and heard the Dear Brother speak when he came to town. I believe the Dear Brother is one of our greatest thinkers.

When the Dear Brother bothers to think. He stopped doing that when he let his ego, the only thing larger than his ‘fro, slip off the leash and he turned himself into a vicious, hypocritical, small-minded hater and it seems to be no coincidence the descent from renowned intellectual to annoying crank came when another blood enemy of Obama began whispering sweet nothing in the acclaimed academic’s ears.

The Enabled and the Enabler.

West hasn’t written a meaningful book, penned a useful article or expressed an original thought since 2008 when he got butthurt over Obama not kissing his ass or give him a position of prominence in his administration as he did with West’s nemesis from Harvard, Larry Summers.

Seriously, isn’t Cornel West starting to look like a hip-hop Hobbit?

It seems the longer West hangs around Smiley the crazier he sounds. Smiley’s enemies (Obama, Al Sharpton, Tom Joyner, Melissa Harris-Perry, Michael Eric Dyson) have become West’s enemies. By lending his diminishing clout to Smiley, West only diminishes his own reputation and enhances Smiley.

West needs to put several time zones of distance between himself and Sub-Prime Smiley and get back to thinking like an intellectual instead of babbling like a damn fool. If West were as smart as he believes himself to be, he’d realize Smiley is playing him the way a pimp plays a ho.

Like this:

I’ve been a member of the National Association of Black Journalists off and on since 1994. It’s about to be “off’ again when my membership lapses in a week, but this time I think it will be for good. Like many long term relationships that go sour, we don’t believe in the same thing anymore. There has always been a struggle between NABJ’s activist and party animal sides but lately it seems like the party animals are kicking the asses of the activists.

Salon columnist Joan Walsh took down a right-wing hatchet man, Tim Graham of the Media Research Center over his race-baiting of MSNBC (and NABJ member?) Karen Finney following the announcement she would be getting her own program on the liberal news network.

MSNBC just announced that Karen Finney, a network political analyst and former communications director of the Democratic National Committee, will host a new weekend show. MRC director of media analysis Tim Graham immediately Tweeted:

Finney is African-American, although MSNBC didn’t particularly “tout” that in its press release; it mentioned that she was the first African-American communications director of the DNC and is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists. I’m not sure what would cause Graham to even muse about her racial bona fides, let alone share his idiocy publicly.

In a 2010 Huffington Post piece Finney wrote about being the descendant of slaves on her father’s side and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on her mother’s side. Maybe it’s too much to ask that Graham inform himself about the biological and cultural diversity of African-Americans. It’s not too much to ask, though, that he shut up about his ignorance, but I won’t hold my breath.

On one hand, congratulations are due to Karen Finney for landing her own TV show on MSNBC. On the other, if it’s true that Finney is a NABJ member (She is. I checked) whose racial authenticity is being mocked by a right-wing media monitoring group, doesn’t that deserve a response from NABJ?

Nope.

There was one response to my query (and it wasn’t from NABJ’s president or vice-president of broadcast to the e-mail I sent them). It came from an respected member who shrugged it off as follows:

Tim Graham’s idiocy is not worthy of an official response from NABJ.However, the pundits among us should feel free to load our satire guns and plug him full of more holes.

Really?

Some right-wing hack/hitman for arch-conservative L. Brent Bozell pulls the brown paper bag test on a NABJ member and The Root, Jezebel, Huffington Post, Salon, Media Matters, The Daily Mail (UK), Talking Points Memo, Richard Prince’s Journal-isms, among other places do find it worthy of their notice, but it’s not worthy of a response from the National Association of Black Journalists?

Congratulations, Karen. Welcome to the media wars. NABJ’s got your back. Just don’t look behind you for them because they’re a ways off in the distance.

I’ve known for a while mine is a minority opinion in an organization of minority journalists. What I’m unsure of is when my views on how NABJ should advocate for journalists of color diverged so drastically from NABJ’s. I’ve read the mission statement for the group and this part jumps out at me.

“I know my Negroes,” says Tim Graham

Sensitizing all media to the importance of fairness in the workplace for black journalists…Fostering an exemplary group of professionals that honors excellence and outstanding achievements by black journalists, and outstanding achievement in the media industry as a whole, particularly when it comes to providing balanced coverage of the black community and society at large

Those are principles worth believing in and fighting for. I still do, but NABJ doesn’t seem to and if they don’t there isn’t enough of anything else they bring to the table worth me being part of it any more.

I don’t make policy for NABJ and I don’t know who does. Maybe no one does. Take this to the bank: If NABJ won’t defend its highest profile members, it sure won’t for those who are not and if that’s the case what do I need NABJ for?

Today the Cleveland Plain-Dealer announced it will cease daily publication and go to three days a week and Sunday. That is terrible news for any journalist. It’s even worse if you’re working for the Plain-Dealer because you might not be much longer. Any guesses on which staffers will be the first given a box to pack their junk and a last paycheck?

But later for that. There’s always another convention in another city most members can’t afford to attend. There’s always another old journalist to honor with an award even if young journalists coming up behind them are facing some hard times. There’s always another Black journalist ready to be dropped like a hot rock by their employer in the mainstream media only to find they won’t find much comfort coming from NABJ.

Finney will be fine. She has paid her dues and joins the MSNBC pool of personalities, but actually has journalistic credentials as a NABJ member. A week ago, nobody knew who Graham was a next week nobody will care what a race-baiting loser like Graham has to say. All Graham has is a small axe to grind and a smaller soapbox to preach to the ten or twelve other losers who read his bullshit.

For my part, I’ve got less than two week remaining on my NABJ membership and right about now, I’m fine about forgetting about NABJ the way NABJ forgets about anyone who isn’t part of the privileged few. The passivity and timidity of the nation’s largest organization of minority journalists on the issues that matter most has become too pervasive and too entrenched. There’s a difference between being cautious and picking your shot and being fearful that if NABJ stands up its corporate underwriters will slap it down.

Like this:

Recently, I wrote that Dr. Ben Carson‘s 15 minutes of fame as a conservative superstar were ticking away. Maybe I need to check my watch because I may have overestimated how soon the Carson Flame-Out is coming.

Carson’s speech at the Conservative Political Action Convention was well received and he placed seventh in a presidential straw poll despite having no political experience. He says he may run for president if it is God’s will.

If he does, he’s going to have to learn Mitt Romney’s lesson and not say what he really thinks. Appearing on Hannity, the not-so-good doctor responded to a question about same-sex marriage:

HANNITY:All right, last question, we have the issue of the Supreme Court dealing with two issues involving gay marriage. I’ve asked you a lot of questions. I’ve never asked you that, what are your thoughts?

CARSON:Well, my thoughts are that marriage is between a man and a woman. It’s a well-established, fundamental pillar of society and no group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality. It doesn’t matter what they are. They don’t get to change the definition. So he, it’s not something that is against gays, it’s against anybody who wants to come along and change the fundamental definitions of pillars of society. It has significant ramifications.

A guy who doesn’t know what to ask and another guy who doesn’t know how to answer.

Well, that’s awkward, but I can’t say I’m surprised by Carson’s intolerance. His egotism and vanity has already been well-established and now we can add cocky intolerance to the mix. It’s a trait I’ve seen in other doctors. They dislike being corrected because they dislike being told they got something wrong. Their yardstick of success is how often they are right. Carson was the first neurosurgeon to successful separate conjoined twins and if he had done nothing else, that would be a good enough reason to add some swagger in his step.

When accomplishing what seems impossible is what you specialize in, it must become easy to start believing even if you’re not God, you can handle his job when he takes a day off.

Carson wouldn’t be the first good Christian whose religious beliefs were overruled by his conservative beliefs. He certainly sounds like just another cowardly politician trying to spin away a brain fart as he backed away from his remarks with an apology qualified with the usual caveats of his remarks being “misunderstood” and “out of context.”

“I think in terms of what was said on Sean Hannity’s show, that was taken completely out of context and completely misunderstood in terms of what I was trying to say,” Carson told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “As a Christian, I have a duty to love all people and that includes people who have other sexual orientations, and I certainly do, and never had any intention of offending anyone… If anyone was offended, I apologize to you.”

This is the risk you take when you only talk to people who already agree with you. Carson is not as skilled in front of a camera and he is with a scalpel. He’s unprepared to talk about hot button topics where his disdain for “political correctness” allows him to fall into the trap of saying what he really believes even when what he believes is toxic to his political ambitions.

Doc Carson is not changing his Facebook profile pic, so don’t ask.

Don’t you love it when someone says they’re sorry (but not really) if you misunderstood what they said and you took offense? Doesn’t it make it your fault for being so darned thin-skinned. Carson knows what he means. Why’s everybody else got a problem with that? Oh, If only those homosexuals would stop agitating for the same rights heterosexuals have. You know, the same way interracial couples wanted their offensive to God and nature marriages to be legally recognized. Craziness!

Maybe I was slightly off on how long Carson’s time in the spotlight was going to last, but it seems I was really off about his future as a politician. Carson has already mastered the key skill to being a successful politician. He’s great at looking people in the eye and lying to their face.

Like this:

Okay, that’s enough. Your prolonged temper tantrum has been quite amusing, disappointed Republicans, but it’s time to cut the crap.

It’s sad and tragic that some people are having such a hard time waking up to the realization that Obama is still president, but you’ve had a week to let that sink in. After a respectable amount of time to give you time to accept you’ve got four more years to suffer through, I don’t haven even one more minute to waste waiting on Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Ted Nugent, Sarah Palin, Mary Matalin, Victoria Jackson, Fox News and pissed off wives that run down their husbands for not voting to get over their Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Some of us are pretty pleased with how last Tuesday turned out. Rachel Maddow is one of the smartest news personalities we have. Watching her makes me smarter than I was before I tuned in.

Maddow ran down a list of what wasn’t going to happen with Barack Obama safely back in the White House. It was quite a list and if anyone missed it, it bears repeating.

(1) “We are not going to have a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe vs. Wade. There will be no more Antonin Scalias and Samuel Alitos added to this court.”
(2) “We’re not going to repeal health reform. Nobody’s going to kill Medicare and make old people in this generation — or any other generation — fight it out on the open market to try to get themselves health insurance. We’re not going to do that.”
(3) “We’re not going to give the 20% tax cut to millionaires and billionaires, and expect [cutting] programs like food stamps and kids’ health insurance to cover that tax cut.”
(4) “We’re not going to make you clear it with your boss if you want to get birth control with the insurance plan that you’re on.”
(5) “We are not going to redefine rape.”
(6) “We are not going to amend the constitution to stop gay people from getting married.”
(7) We’re not going to double down on Guantanamo.
(8) “We’re not eliminating the Department of Energy, the Department of Education, or Housing at the Federal level.”
(9) “We are not going to spend two trillion dollars on the military, that the military does not want.”
(10) “We are not scaling back on student loans because the country’s NEW plan is that you should borrow money from your parents.”
(11) “We are not vetoing the Dream Act, we are not ‘self-deporting.’”
(12) “We are not letting Detroit go bankrupt.”
(13) “We are not starting a trade war with China on Inauguration Day in January.”

(14) “We are not going to have — as a president — a man who once led a mob of friends to run down a scared gay kid to hold him down and forcibly cut his hair off with a pair of scissors while that kid cried and screamed for help. (And there was NO apology, not EVER.)”
(15) “We are not going to have a Secretary of State John Bolton. We are not going to bring Dick Cheney Back. We are not going to have a foreign policy shop stocked with architects of the Iraqi war, we are not going to do it … We had the choice to do that if we wanted to do that, as a country, and we said no, last night, loudly.”

Ah, Rachel, if television is the idiot box, it’s no wonder the idiots hate you for refusing to dumb down your show to make stupid people (like thismoron in Cincinnati) feel better about themselves.

Like this:

MSNBC finally had enough of their in-house Little Hitler and fired Pat Buchanan. The aging old bigot greased the pole himself with his Suicide of A Superpower book where he whined about the end of White America by 2025.

Following his exile from the supposedly “liberal” cable channel, Buchanan fumed that his left-wing enemies had finally claimed his scalp.

My days as a political analyst at MSNBC have come to an end.

After 10 enjoyable years, I am departing, after an incessant clamor from the left that to permit me continued access to the microphones of MSNBC would be an outrage against decency, and dangerous.

The calls for my firing began almost immediately with the Oct. 18 publication of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?”

A group called Color of Change, whose mission statement says that it “exists to strengthen Black America’s political voice,” claimed that my book espouses a “white supremacist ideology.” Color of Change took particular umbrage at the title of Chapter 4, “The End of White America.”

I know these blacklisters. They operate behind closed doors, with phone calls, mailed threats and off-the-record meetings. They work in the dark because, as Al Smith said, nothing un-American can live in the sunlight.

No one is being “blacklisted” here. Certainly not Buchanan. He’s still free to write his shitty books and columns and appear on whatever TV show that wants to air his rancid views. CNN and MSNBC have said, “no mas” so he’s free to continue polluting PBS and The McLaughlin Group or Fox News if they need another Glenn Beck type.

No surprise that Buchanan accepted no responsibility for his downfall. He’s not the self-reflective type. What was a slight surprise was how Buchanan’s bouncing triggered an onslaught of hand-wringing weeping and wailing from useful idiots like The Daily Beast’sAndrew Sullivan, the gay neo-conservative whose soft spot for bigots includes Ron Paul.

"Stop being mean to Pat just because he's mean to you."

Sullivan wrote, “Sixteen years ago, when I came out as HIV-positive and quit TNR’s editorship, Buchanan, who had sparred relentlessly in public with me over gay equality, wrote me a personal hand-written note. He wrote he was saddened by what he heard – which was then regarded as an imminent death sentence – and wanted to say how he would pray that I would survive, if only so we could continue to argue and fight and debate for many more years. He was one of only two Washingtonians who did such a thing. I was moved beyond words. But he knew I loved a good argument as well. Over a gulf of ideological and philosophical difference, we could debate reasonably…He’s a complicated man and I will not defend for a second his views on many things. But he is also a compassionate and decent man in private and an honest intellectual in public.”

I particularly found this passage by Sullivan interesting, “He truly believes what he says and has read and researched a huge amount and has thought carefully about his extreme out-of-the-mainstream views. He is a serious figure in that respect. Compared with Al Sharpton or Ed Schultz, he is a paragon of intellectual integrity. He is not a propagandist. He is a passionate writer who loves nothing more than a good argument with a worthy opponent – and he has a serious sense of humor to boot.”

As far as Sullivan concerned it’s all good to be a racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, Nazi slurping, sexist bigot just so long as you have thought carefully out your extreme out-of-the-mainstream views and you have a sense of humor.

Sullivan extols Buchanan’s compassion and decency while ignoring how it does not extend to other gay men. This is the same “honest intellectual” who said AIDS was “nature’s revenge” and history of denouncing homosexuality includes remarks such as:

The gays may counter that the American Psychiatric Association has, of late, dropped homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. That, however, tells us less about the nature of homosexuals than about the moral courage of the APA. If a covey of quacks voted tomorrow that masochism, bestiality, and incest were not signs of personality disorder, that don’t necessarily make it so. One need not be a doctor of philosophy to know that when some 40-year-old male paints his face with rouge and lipstick and prances around in women’s clothes, he ain’t playing with a full deck.

Homosexuality is not a civil right. Its rise almost always is accompanied, as in the Weimar Republic, with a decay of society and a collapse of its basic cinder block, the family. Homosexuality involves sexual acts most men consider not only immoral, but filthy. The reason public men rarely say aloud what most say privately is they are fearful of being branded ‘bigots’ by an intolerant liberal orthodoxy that holds, against all evidence and experience, that homosexuality is a normal, healthy lifestyle.

There is no brief for police harassment or persecution of homosexuals. They have the same right to protection from exploitation as alcoholics, who are, likewise, sick people. As for putting practicing homosexuals in prison, as some state laws mandate, that is like throwing B’rer Rabbit into the briar patch.

As an openly gay man, Sullivan’s passionate defend of his buddy Buchanan is as indefensible as Jews that collaborated with the Nazis. What’s the gay equivalent of an Uncle Tom?

Buchanan can take his tired act over to Fox News after burning out at CNN and MSNBC. Fox is the logical last step for this Angry Old White Man before Stormfront, Nobody ever got fired from Fox for being too prejudiced.

The tolerance for Buchanan’s hatred for everything non-White, non-heterosexual and non-Christian is legendary, documented and unlimited. Idiots like Andrew Sullivan can kiss his Irish ass all they like, but for anyone who doesn’t fit into the Wonderful White World of Pat Buchanan, you’re on his enemies list.

I’m extremely pleased to consider myself as an enemy to all things Pat Buchanan. Sullivan should smarten up and realize Buchanan’s America has no room for gays, even conservative British ones.

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History will be made Saturday morning when Melissa Harris-Perry, a professor of political science at Tulane University, hosts a morning political talk show on MSNBC. Asked what her show will be about Harris-Perry told The Amsterdam News, “Although it’s not a show about race-look, I’m a professor of African-American politics, so we’re going to be talking about race. I’m a feminist, so we’re going to be talking about gender. I’m a parent, so we’re going to be talking about kids and young people. I live in the South, so we’re going to talk about politics beyond the D.C.-to-New-York corridor. It’s a political show but it definitely has a point of view.”

Those are points of view absent from the Sunday morning talking heads shows where Black women are non-existent. I welcome Harris-Perry and wish her well. But there’s no news that someone can’t find a way to receive it as bad. Enter Cornel “the ‘Fro” West and his Mini-Me, Boyce Watkins.

In an interview, West unloaded on Harris-Perry, his former colleague at Princeton. “I have a love for the sister, but she is a liar, and I hate lying,’ says West. . . . She’s become the momentary darling of the liberals, but I pray for her because she’s in over her head. She’s a fake and a fraud. I was so surprised how treacherous the sister was.’

Yet before West heated up a clothes hanger to whip on Harris-Perry with, Watkins had scribbled his own bit of character assassination with a piece, “5 Reasons Melissa Harris-Perry is Perfect for MSNBC.”

If I end up sounding like a hater, it’s because I probably am. White people, as a collective, have never like (sic) me very much and advocating for black folks has never been an easy way to pay the bills. Also, my gripe with Melissa is the same I’d have with any black person who allows herself to be propped up by the Democrats to do their dirty work against Cornel West as he spoke on behalf of black, brown and poor people. Harris never proved that Dr. West was wrong – she only sought to discredit him and dismantle his voice. In that regard, she was no different from a slave using the master’s gun to kill the leader of the negro rebellion.

She is clearly a liberal who happens to be a black woman, not a black woman who happens to be a liberal…The whole light-skinned black liberal thing works in her favor: I should start by noting that I’m a bit light-skinned myself and nearly all of my relatives are of the “high-yella” variety (I was adopted). So, this is not meant to offend anyone with light skin.

Watkins breaks out the pimp stick.

In one breath, Watkins says he doesn’t mean to offend light-skinned Blacks. Can you guess what he follows that caution with? If you guessed offending light-skinned Blacks, you win!

But, the emergence of Barack Obama has opened the door for quite a few light-skinned, non-threatening, black superstars of both politics and media: Cory Booker, Harold Ford, Don Lemon on CNN and a few others have been able to benefit from this wave. Harris-Perry is a perfect fit as the (in the words of cousin Pookie) “light-skinded-ded,” red-bone, highly educated liberal that white folks tend to love. Nothing militant will come out of her mouth, unless she’s angry about a new immigration law or some civil liberties violation in the National Defense Authorization Act. Not to say that there’s anything wrong with the “light-skinned liberal analyst” phenomenon, but I wonder how successful these folks might be if they looked like they were siblings of Wesley Snipes – darker skinned commentators and pundits deserve opportunities as well, and I argue that they are being put to the side (can you think of one dark-skinned person in prime time media? Me neither).

The cherry on top of Watkins talking out of both sides of his mouth comes with a slap at Harris-Perry for doing the exact same thing he does.

Black journalists have long complained about what Al Sharpton referred to as “All white, all night,” in which most of the major cable news outlets didn’t have any hosts of color on their nightly branded shows. The best way to shut down that criticism is to hire Al Sharpton himself, which is exactly what MSNBC did. But one challenge is that neither Sharpton, nor Harris-Perry, is a professionally-trained journalist, so there are still quite a few talented black journalists who are seething over the fact that MSNBC went after black scholars and activists, rather than seasoned media professionals.

For the record, I am not a real journalist either. I am one of those scholar/activists who’s been able to benefit from the bias of which I am speaking (I have more media appearances than nearly all of my journalist friends).

Nobody made more of an issue about Sharpton landing the MSNBC gig than I did, but Watkins has twisted the legitimate concerns of “real journalists” who would like to see Blacks who do this thing for a living a shot at these television gigs as well as Black scholars and activists.

Watkins doesn’t like Harris-Perry, he’s not happy for her and he even goes so far as to question her Blackness and commitment to Black people because she prefers Obama to West. It just comes off as that small-minded, crabs in a barrel mentality that keeps us busy squabbling over small stuff that isn’t worth squat.

Call me a cynic, but this “I won’t do cable TV ’cause I want to keep it real” rap is more than a little self-serving. There are too many Black folks who are doing cable TV and they aren’t running away from their Blackness by doing so. Watkins spew out a hit piece that is mean, petty, and it smacks of simple envy. If MSNBC offered Watkins a show he’d run over West to get it.

On his Facebook page, Watkins denied everything in response to my challenging him about Harris-Perry.

Never blame on malice what can be adequately explained by sexism.

Brother, I can give you the real deal on the “smell test” – my goal is not to be objective about Melissa or to politely say “congratulations” to someone I think is bad for black America.

I make it ABUNDANTLY CLEAR that I am not appreciative of Melissa’s views. Her attacks on Cornel were uncalled for and unvalidated – I was very angry at the way she allowed white folks to prop her up on a platform so she could do the dirty work for the Democrats who were upset that Cornel was out speaking on behalf of poor, black and brown folks.

To answer any questions that might be asked about my remarks…no, I don’t want a f*cking job at MSNBC. I’ve been on all the networks numerous times and could have gotten quite a few gigs had I been a “good boy.” I’ve lost millions for speaking what I believe to be the truth and my only goal is to seek independence of thought and commerce for black America. In far too many cases, major black voices are controlled by white-owned media outlets and corporations – That’s why I put all my money and time into yourblackworld.com, which allows me to get my message to the public without having to ask for a white man’s permission. I don’t hate white folks, but the truth is that their agenda is almost always different from your own and they always view us as second-class citizens.

Someone who is “bad for Black America?” What is about Melissa Harris-Perry that is “bad for Black America?” What’s really bad for Black America are Black academics talking smack like winos on the corner.

Harris-Perry took issue with West when he whined to a WHITE guy (Chris Hedges) how hurt he was that he didn’t get a personal invitation to Obama’s inauguration.

West came off like a jilted girlfriend, not a preeminent Black intellectual. It was pompous, it was small and it was arrogant as hell. Cornel West wasn’t speaking out for poor, Black and brown folks. He was ticked off that “the dear brother” who brought his bags to his hotel room had a ticket to the Inauguration and he didn’t.

There is a cost for working in the mainstream (just ask Roland Martin), but I’m not buying the line only those out of it care about, protect the interests of, and love Black people. No one is required to watch MHP on MSNBC. Just don’t say you’re “happy” for her when you have made it crystal clear you are anything but.

Going after Harris-Perry for being “light-skinned” is as petty at it gets. By the Boyce Watkins standard, only folks as dark as Wesley Snipes (or Clarence Thomas!) can legitimately criticize other Blacks because they are “dark enough to decide who is really part of the club.

The weakest attack to make against someone is to cast doubts upon the content of the character based upon the color of their skin. Black academics love a good disagreement, but when the intellectual quality of the argument doesn’t rise to the level of a beef between second-rate rappers, that’s pathetic.

West and Watkins are too smart brothers. They should be smart enough to expend their brain power on a real problem facing Black folks. Harris-Perry getting a TV show isn’t one of them. Then again, maybe there’s another reason for Watkins and West’s “bros before hos” smackdown of MHP. Maybe it’s nothing more than sexism. Plain and simple, they are simply asserting their male prerogative to put an uppity sista in her place.

Sometimes its most obvious reasons that are the least considered.

The next time West and Smiley plan a road trip for self-serving publicity, they should pack a booster seat in the back and bring Boyce Watkins along for the ride.

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We like to tell ourselves only stupid people are stupid enough to be openly racist these days. Things have changed and we’re all so much more enlightened and past all that tired old prejudice thing. Some of us even got ourselves believing its racism by Blacks against Whites that’s the real problem now.

Then there are the few and the proud who know better. They’re few because their old school brand of bigotry has diminished and dimmed over the passage of time. But they’re still proud to be White, Right and on top and they aren’t going to fade quietly away when they perceive their standing is being threatened.

He’s putting on his Paul Revere gear to warn of the dire consequences that will happen to America when Whites are no longer the majority race somewhere around 2041.

John Hope Franklin, the famed black historian at Duke University, once told the incoming freshmen, “The new America in the 21st century will be primarily non-white, a place George Washington would not recognize.”

In his June 1998 commencement address at Portland State, President Clinton affirmed it: “In a little more than 50 years, there will be no majority race in the United States.” The graduates cheered.

The Census Bureau has now fixed at 2041 the year when whites become a minority in a country where the Founding Fathers had restricted citizenship to “free white persons” of “good moral character.”

What are the seemingly inevitable consequences of an America where whites are a shrinking minority?

First, the end of a national Republican Party that routinely gets 90 percent of its presidential votes from white America.

California is the harbinger of what is to come.

Carried by Richard Nixon in all five presidential elections when he was on the ticket and by Ronald Reagan all four times he ran, California, where whites are now a shrinking minority, is a state where the GOP faces extinction. John McCain’s share of the California vote was down to the Barry Goldwater level of 1964.

When Texas, where two-thirds of the newborns and half the schoolchildren are Hispanic, goes the way of California, it is the end for the GOP. Arizona, Colorado and Nevada, also critical to any victorious GOP coalition, are Hispanicizing as rapidly as Texas.

In every presidential election since Bush I in 1992, Hispanics have given 60-70 percent of their votes to the Democratic ticket.

For Hispanics, largely poor and working class, are beneficiaries of a cornucopia of government goods – from free education to food stamps to free health care. Few pay federal income taxes.

Why would they not vote for the Party of Government?

Second, the economic crisis of California, brought on by an outflow of taxpayers and a huge influx of tax consumers – i.e., millions of immigrants, legal and illegal – will be mirrored nationally.

For though the majority of immigrants and illegals comes to work, and work hard, most now come from Third World countries and do not bring the academic or professional skills of European-Americans.

Third, the decline in academic test scores here at home and in international competition is likely to continue, as more and more of the children taking those tests will be African-American and Hispanic. For though we have spent trillions over four decades, we have failed to close the racial gap in education. White and Asian children continue to outscore black and Hispanic children.

Can the test-score gap be closed? With the Hispanic illegitimacy rate at 51 percent and the black rate having risen to 71 percent, how can their children conceivably arrive at school ready to compete?

Should this continue for three decades, what will it mean for America if Asians and whites occupy the knowledge-industry jobs, while scores of millions of black and Hispanic workers are relegated to low-paying service-sector jobs? Will that make for social tranquility?

Affirmative action is one answer. But this is already causing a severe backlash, and the reason is obvious.

When affirmative action was first imposed, whites outnumbered blacks nine to one. The burden of reverse discrimination on the white community was thus relatively light. Today, however, not only blacks, but Hispanics and women – two-thirds of the entire population – qualify for affirmative action in hiring and school admissions.

Those who hold the white race responsible for the mortal sins of mankind – slavery, racism, imperialism, genocide – may welcome its departure from history.

Those who believe that the civilization that came out of Jerusalem, Athens, Rome and London to be the crowning achievement of mankind will mourn its passing.

I’m not going to say I’m looking forward to the 72-year old Buchanan’s passing, but I won’t lie and say I’m going to be upset when it happens. Here we have a former Nixon speechwriter, failed presidential candidate, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, Nazi sympathizing, Holocaust denying, racist, xenophobic scumbag who revels in being angry and outspoken about who he loves (White people) and who he hates (everybody else).

I’ve said it myself: Hitler comparisons are weak. Most of the time they are made in error and are applied inaccurately.

But not in the case of Patrick J. Buchanan. In this dude’s case you’d be hard pressed to find a mainstream commentator more likely to cut Hitler slack than Prejudiced Pat.

His anti-Semitism is well-established as well as his passionate defense of accused Nazi war criminals. Buchanan doesn’t apologize for it and he’s not going to run away from his racist and supremacist beliefs I’m not going to shy away from calling him out on it.

Obama’s White House thus enlisted in the long and successful campaign to expel Christianity from the public square, diminish its presence in our public life, and reduce its role to that of just another religion.
The white population will begin to shrink and, should present birth rates persist, slowly disappear. Hispanics already comprise 42 percent of New Mexico’s population, 37 percent of California’s, 38 percent of Texas’s, and over half the population of Arizona under the age of twenty. ……. Mexico is moving north. Ethnically, linguistically, and culturally, the verdict of 1848 is being overturned. Will this Mexican nation within a nation advance the goals of the Constitution—to “insure domestic tranquility” and “make us a more perfect union”? Or has our passivity in the face of this invasion imperiled our union?

Not until the 1960s did courts begin to use the Fourteenth Amendment to impose a concept of equality that the authors of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, The Federalist Papers, and the Gettysburg Address never believed in. Before the 1960s, equality meant every citizen enjoyed the same constitutional rights and the equal protection of existing laws. Nothing in the Constitution or federal law mandated social, racial, or gender equality.

If [conservative political commentator Heather] Mac Donald’s statistics are accurate, 49 of every 50 muggings and murders in New York are the work of minorities. That might explain why black folks have trouble getting a cab. Every New York cabby must know the odds, should he pick up a man of color at night.

Two things smell like pork and one of them is pork.

Then there’s my favorite “OMG/WTF” quote.

Perhaps some of us misremember the past. But the racial, religious, cultural, social, political, and economic divides today seem greater than they seemed even in the segregation cities some of us grew up in.

Back then, black and white lived apart, went to different schools and churches, played on different playgrounds, and went to different restaurants, bars, theaters, and soda fountains. But we shared a country and a culture. We were one nation. We were Americans.

For some reason I have this sudden urge to start whistling “Dixie.” What a mind-boggling confessional of sheer paranoia, hatred and outright lunacy. When I read some delusional bullshit where a some Irish asshole like Buchanan longs for the days when the darkies knew their place and stayed there I wish I had the opportunity to sit down with Mr. Buchanan so I could look him directly in the face and say, “Hey, Pat? Go to hell, you racist punk “

Buchanan is crazy as the day is long but he’s also well-paid and has a high-profile to air his bigotry against Blacks, Latinos, gays, Jews, women and anyone else who isn’t straight, White, male and Irish Catholic. He is Archie Bunker without the laugh track.

Shame on MSNBC for turning a blind eye to this evil old bastard’s hatred of everything that isn’t White, straight and Christian. These kinds of expressions of bias is nothing new from Buchanan, but MSNBC seems content to allow him to go on vomiting up his provincial Left to his own devices, Buchanan is nothing to get excited about. He might have another ten years of hate speech left in him and then he’s gone like a bad odor. His racism is indistinguishable from that of a David Duke, but because he has some credentials he has credibility Duke can only dream of.

It’s easy to dismiss Buchanan as an aging anachronism soon to disappear in the tar pits with all the other dinosaurs whose brains were too small to adapt to a brave new world. It’s a mistake to think what he says doesn’t resonate in the corridors of power where the decisions are made to support or oppose people
of color rising up to assume their rightful place in this country.

Forget about Occupy Wall Street. Let’s Occupy Pat Buchanan’s brain. We just have to find it first.

Buy it for that racist in your family who's worn out their copy of "Mein Kampf"